Comment from @chx on a different thread I found last week:
You can check which ThinkPad BIOS has the option at their BIOS emulation site: https://download.lenovo.com/bsco/index.html
For mine it's under Config // Power // Sleep State. Windows 10 means useless Modern Standby, Linux means S3. https://i.imgur.com/Y5CchL9.png
That's also the main motivation for me to call this out in such a detailed article – people should have all the choices available to them and not have them artificially directed to "Intel -> quality, AMD -> value/compromise".
Cynical take: so you buy it, then realize it's soldered, then buy another computer?
> But what I really want to know is where the full bios manual is, so that I can see if its possible to enable S3 standby.
Some Lenovo laptops that come with Windows have a "Sleep State" option that you can switch from "Windows 10" to "Linux", which I think is what disables Modern Standby? I've seen C3 be enabled by one of the options on a recent Lenovo, I think it was probably that setting.
Bingo! That's why they're all getting a big middle finger from me, and I'm gonna walk the walk and take my money to Framework as all the others try to push you to their premium-buisness-ripoff lines of machines if you want a laptop with more than 16 gigs of RAM.
FFS, just because I need 32 or 64 gigs of RAM doesn't mean I want a $4000 workstation enterprise machine with all the bells and whistles I will never use. Just give me your regular $1000 machine and bill me for the difference to 32/64 gigs.
It'd be great if there was a marketing push for gaming laptop-like performance without all the gaming embellishments like RGB lighting, "stealth" appearance, etc. I'd love an elegantly designed, high-capacity battery version.
The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition gets the best of these features, with the one exception of lacking a mux switch to turn off the integrated graphics when using the dedicated graphics for even more performance on the built-in screen. There are several YouTube videos that cover this, amongst the best are Jarrod's Tech.
Meh ... Better to wait for an AMD Framework laptop ...
I really feel an arrangement like this should be outlawed, it really makes little to sense to not have both be regular, upgradable SODIMMs like almost every other normal laptop.
But what I really want to know is where the full bios manual is, so that I can see if its possible to enable S3 standby. My use case for a laptop generally involves putting it in my bag overnight/etc and I expect the battery to basically be where I left it over the weekend/etc. I've yet to have a "modern standby" machine that can pull that off without hibernating the machine. Frequently even with hibernation it will wake repeatedly and drain the battery anyway. Toss in the fact that i've not had good luck with AMD machines power savings and that makes it doubly important that S3 works.
The lack of a pre-installed linux option doesn't provide much confidence.
Acer and some of the smaller vendors seem to be the only ones providing a full suite of BIOS options on their machines (they also have two dimm slots). The problem is that their machines are plasticy and have crummy form factors.